Tag Archives: dead zombie

ZOMBIE THEME PARK – COOLEST THING EVER

Why wait for the zombie apocalypse? One man wants customers to experience the terror now.

With soaring budget deficits and population on the decline, Detroit has become a laboratory for testing out creative solutions for cities, like urban farming and pedestrian-friendly greenway trails.

Mark Siwak says he has his own idea for bettering the city — a live-action zombie theme park set in one of Detroit’s abandoned neighborhoods.

Paying customers would be chased by a growing horde of zombies (all professionals) through a cordoned-off, desolate section of the city, seeking shelter in abandoned homes and factories and businesses.

Z World creator Siwak, who has launched a fundraiser on IndieGoGo (he’s raised $2,200 of the $140,000 needed to meet his goal), says that the city of Detroit needs to consider creative solutions to areas of urban blight.

Mayor Dave Bing’s long-touted campaign promise was the implementation of theDetroit Works Project, which could ultimately relocate residents from blighted districts to more populated areas in an attempt to centralize city services. Spread across 140 square miles, Detroit proper is so large that the entire cities of San Francisco and Boston, plus the borough of Manhattan, can fit inside its borders.

And Siwak says, with all that land, there’s room in the Motor City for a zombie theme park. He even compares his idea to the city’s famed Heidelberg Project, in which artist Tyree Guyton transformed the empty homes of his neighborhood into a large-scale art installation.

But some critics have shrugged off “Z World” as an exploitative and insensitive ploy to profit off the glamorization of Detroit’s problems. Curbed Detroit blogger Sarah Cox wrote that Siwak’s plan “sounds a lot like all that fun we had during the 1960s race riots. It is nice to know that Z Land is finally going to capitalize on our love of adrenaline rushes and nostalgia. Now even visitors from the ‘burbs can ‘wonder if they will make it through the night.'”

Siwak told CBS Detroit that “the city can only have so many urban farms or similar uses for vacant plots.’

And while he’s far away from his funding goals, not to mention permission from the City of Detroit, he says he’s already getting resumes from Detroiters who’d like their next 9-to-5 to focus on eating brains and staggering through the streets.

On his site, Siwak assured, “while zombies are great, the real neat thing about this project is the potential to inject some life into a forgotten neighborhood – with the opportunity to work with neighborhood groups and organization.”

This wouldn’t be the world’s first live-action zombie role-play game, though Detroit’s proposal is almost certainly the most expansive. In Atlanta, thrill-seekers wielding paint ball guns will pay as much as $30 to play hide-and-seek with undead zombies in a formerly abandoned truck stop rechristened as the Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse, opening Sept. 28. Over on the other side of the pond, wish.co.uk offers zombie combat mission experiences with training from military veterans and movie-grade special effects.

Zombie Questions

QUESTION:

WHAT’S THE MOST SATISFYING WAY TO KILL A ZOMBIE? 
a) Baseball Bat b) Machete c) Shotgun d) Liquid Nitrogen e) Wood-Chipper.

The BASEBALL BAT (aka: Louisville Slugger) is great for that up-close and personal touch. Whether you use wood or aluminum, be advised, after a good head-bashing, you might experience a temporary tingling or numbness in your wrists.

The MACHETE, a cross between an axe and a knife, is a good multi-use tool. Downside: Constant practice and blade-sharpening can seem like chores. QUICK TIP: If you must have a machete, get a Kukri (central Asia) or the Tapanga (Africa).

On the other hand, for elegance, precision, and stealthy silence, nothing beats the Japanese Katana sword – think Highlander.

The SHOTGUN. It gives new meaning the the term: “Scatterbrained”. But seriously folks, what’s not to like about a pump-action, Mossberg 500 – it’s an American Classic. Downside: Shotgun blasts are messy and very loud.

LIQUID NITROGEN. Yes, it’s very “out-of-the box” thinking but it’s also very complicated and it wouldn’t actually kill a zombie as much as slow it down.

The WOOD-CHIPPER. Granted, they’re not cheap and coaxing the undead inside one can be tricky. On the other hand, nothing is more satisfying then seeing the total (million tiny bit) annihilation of a zombie. Oh yeah, Zed is dead.